EU Referendum


EU politics: John Major strikes again


13/11/2014



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John Major, the man who agreed the Maastricht Treaty and then called his people together after the talks to find out what he had agreed to, is now in Berlin, at the Konrad-Adenaeur-Stiftung political foundation, telling an invited audience that Britain leaving the EU would be "catastrophic".

The Times is framing the event in terms of Major throwing his weight behind David Cameron's effort to reform the EU's immigration rules, arguing that it is in the interests of the "colleagues" to meet Britain's demands to limit numbers coming to the UK from the rest of the EU.

His pitch is that the issue of immigration must be tackled in order to halt the momentum that has powered xenophobic, far-right political parties to sweeping gains across Europe. Then, while acknowledging that free movement of people is one of the founding principles of the EU, Major says that, far from being sacrosanct, the rules are "infinitely negotiable".

Alongside the Guardian, the BBC is on the case as well, having Major warn that the EU is "sleepwalking into antagonisms it cannot repair", telling his audience that the UK and the EU are "close to a breach that's not in our interests or theirs". A "divorce" between the UK and EU, he says, would be "final".

This current intervention brings to mind Major's speech to Chatham House in February last year, only weeks after Mr Cameron had promised his 2017 referendum.

Then he was telling us that the referendum could heal many old sores and have a cleansing effect on politics. It would be healthy, he said, to let the electorate re-endorse our membership, or pull us out altogether. At present, he opined, "we are drifting towards – and possibly through – the European exit". We needed, he said, "a renegotiation – and a referendum endorsement of it, and if that is denied, the clamour for it will only grow".

Now we have got the possibility of a referendum but no sign of a meaningful (or any) negotiation, Major seems to be getting a little worried. But having supported the referendum, he would have difficulty turned back and denying support for it. Thus he is left imploring the "colleagues" to change their ways.

It may well be that the recent ECJ judgement on benefit payments will be called in aid, but from Oborne's extraordinarily ignorant intervention on this, there is no sign that any establishment commentators have the first idea of what is going on.

But if the "colleagues" turn round and tell Major that freedom of movement is and always has been a "qualified and limited" right, then it becomes necessary for the British government to demonstrate that it has done all that is possible to limit abuse of the right, before it asks for changes in the treaties.

More and more it is becoming evident that the UK has been lax in applying measures which might dissuade migrants from coming here. The latest is the issue of families claiming child allowance for children abroad. Apparently, there are 24,000 such families claiming for 38,500 children, with two-thirds of the children based in Poland.

There has to be a work-round on this which does not contravene EU non-discrimination rules, but the fact that Nick Clegg, with an election in the offing and Ukip breathing down his neck, is only now looking at the issue tells its own story.

You can thus understand why the "colleagues" are less than enthusiastic about wanting to break into their own treaties at the behest of the UK. But it is also difficult for any British government to admit that there have been all sorts of things that it could have done, but chose not to, thus rendering much of the problem one of their own making.

This further puts Ukip out on a limb as well. With the party insistent that all problems start and end with the EU, it is totally compromised when it comes actually to dealing with the immigration issue, as opposed to dispensing rhetoric about how awful it is.

It hardly suits Ukip's book to admit that we could achieve as much from creative, and properly resourced controls within the scope of EU rules – together with constraints on the ECHR and the human rights "industry" – as we could from leaving the EU without a credible immigration control strategy in place.

All of that, though, renders John Major's sojourn to Berlin somewhat of a waste of time and effort. He, no more than Ukip, can see his way through the present morass. Rather than looking to the "colleagues" for a solution, he might be better employed calling for the UK to instigate some remedies of their own.

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